Dec 7, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Chiara Lubich’s consecration to God on December 7, 1943, when she was 23 years old, laid the foundations of the Focolare Movement. Sixty years later she recalled that moment in a telephone linkup, inviting all members of the Movement to give their lives to God once more. … Looking back today, we can understand what the 7th of December 1943, the year of the Movement’s birth decades ago, can tell us. It tells us that a charism of the Holy Spirit, a new light came down on earth during those days, a light that, in the mind of God, was destined to quench the burning thirst of this world with the water of Wisdom, to warm it with divine love and thus give life to a new people nourished by the Gospel. And God decided to call me, a girl like many others, and hence my consecration to him, my “yes” to God, soon followed by the “yes” said by many other young women and men. That day speaks of light, then, and of people giving their lives to God as instruments in his hands for the achievement of his goals. Light and giving our lives to God: two realities that were extremely useful at that time when there was general confusion, mutual hatred and war. It was a time of darkness, when God’s love, his peace, joy and guidance seemed to be absent from the world, and it seemed that no one was interested in him. Light and giving our lives to God, two words which heaven wants to repeat to us again today, when many wars continue to be waged on our planet and terrorism has appeared as something even more frightening. Light means the Word, the Gospel, which is still too little known and, above all, not lived enough. Giving our lives to God is more necessary and right than ever today, considering that men and women who join causes the pursued by terrorism are ready to give their lives. What then should we Christians do, as followers of a God who was crucified and forsaken in order to bring about a new world, for our salvation and for that Life which will never end? … We should go out again into the world as living Gospels, so as to immerse it in its Light. We can do this by continuing to live God’s will in the present moment … without forgetting the Word of Life, which is taken from Scripture and offered to us month by month. … And, almost as if we were reborn, let’s give ourselves completely to God once more, in the path he has chosen for each one of us. In this way, the present and future that God gives us will also be pleasing to him.
Chiara Lubich
(From a telephone conference call, Rocca di Papa, 25th April 1991)
Dec 5, 2020 | Non categorizzato
The help of the Focolare communities in Latin American countries: actual gestures to be “all brothers (and sisters)”, as Pope Francis invoked in his last encyclical. 
In Peru and in the other Latin American countries we see the continuous arrival of migrants, especially from Venezuela, but also Cuba, Central America, Haiti, and Arab countries. The Focolare communities are committed every day to helping these people. Silvano Roggero, a focolarino in Peru tells us: “Our adventure in Peru begins a few days before Christmas 2017. We invited some Venezuelans we met for lunch at home. At first there were five of them, later on we moved to the “Juan Carlos Duque” Centre because more than 120 people came! I remember Geno’s meeting with Karlin and her three young children. Crouching on the pavement, she was selling sweets. Geno heard a loud voice inside: “It’s Jesus!”. Going back he buys some sweets and invites her to lunch. That Sunday she came with the 3 children and also brought her sister with her two children!” In Colombia near Bogotá, Alba, who arrived as a migrant from Venezuela in 2014, has become a point of reference for the “Caminantes” (migrants) who pass by daily at the local Centre. One day, she hadn’t had lunch yet when a pregnant woman with her partner visited the centre needing medical attention. At the local dispensary there was a very attentive and kind nurse who could help them. Despite the cold, the hunger, the worry of leaving her volunteer colleagues alone at the Centre and also her children at home without lunch, Alba accompanied them to the dispensary and waited with them. At the end of the visit she accompanied the two young parents back to the Centre, and guess what happened? The Caminantes, knowing what Alba had done for the couple, put together some money to buy two cartons of eggs for her, her children and colleagues! Truly a hundredfold! From whom? From those who need it most! At the end of 2018, the Focolare community in Mexico City joined in the “humanitarian reception” of groups of migrants. A civil association inspired by the charism of the Focolare Movement gave its technical contribution and coordination to the authorities. A location was established to facilitate the collection and distribution of food, clothes, personal hygiene products and dozens of blankets. You can imagine the gratitude of the migrants. Brazil has also welcomed many migrants. The local community reports: “The multiplication of donations surprises us. We make a request for a heater, suddenly we get much more. Someone asks us for a sink and the next day a person we don’t know offers to help and donates five. One day a friend goes to buy something to give us. He explains to the shopkeeper the reasons for the purchase and is surprised by the discount and the free delivery offered . On another occasion a person we don’t know tells us: “I will organise an event and with the proceeds I will order some food for you to send to those who need it”.
Lorenzo Russo
Dec 4, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Destroyed by the flood of 2019, the Fazenda has been rebuilt through the contribution of the Focolare Movement’s Emergency Coordination Team, Famiglie Nuove Association and Azione Mondo Unito. 
“It was really hard after the tragedy,” said Ildo Foppo, a Focolare Volunteer, who is responsible for the mission of the Fazenda da Esperança in Dombe, Mozambique, referring to the dramatic flood which struck the country in March 2019. “But at the same time we were sure everything that happened could give new life to these places and to this community,” he added, reflecting on the most precious fruits borne of this shared commitment to reconstruction. “The ties with the local Church have strengthened, as well as with the emergency aid organizations and the whole local community. We’ve met so many people and have received many promises of help.” The devastation and necessity to rebuild actually became an opportunity to create jobs for many people. “We formed several cooperatives, each composed of ten families. In this way many were enabled to earn their own living, and start to rebuild their own future”. Now, nearly two years after the flood, the collaboration between the Fazenda and the Focolare Movement’s Emergency Coordination Team, Famiglie Nuove Association and Azione Mondo Unito, has covered repairs to the nursery, the hospital, four hostels, the secondary school and the Church. Accommodation and service blocks have been completely rebuilt. A warehouse was made available for making the cement blocks required for the construction of family houses. During the first phase of the emergency, food supplies were distributed to those who had lost their homes. 550 temporary shelters with latrines were also quickly built for the homeless families. Later a support programme was developed to promote sustainable income-generation for the population. In particular, 150 families received direct help with house repairs as well as the aquisition of seeds, fertilizer and tractor fuel to facilitate their return to agricultural production. In addition, a carpentry workshop was established which offers training and work to more than 60 young people staying at the Fazenda. And a mill was constsructed to serve around 330 families. These plans were completed despite all the recent pressures brought by Covid-19 to the country. For updates on this project and the region, click: Amu or Afn.
Claudia Di Lorenzi
If you want to make your contribution to help those suffering from the effects of the global Covid crisis, go to this link
Dec 2, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Now in its eighth edition, even Covid could not stop the march that is part of the “Harmony Among Peoples” festival. We talk with Antonella Lombardo, artistic director of the Laboratorio Accademico Danza (LAD) dance school in Montecatini, Italy and promoter of the event. We have seen them in the most different places in these months of pandemic: pianists, violinists, rockers, pop and opera singers on the roofs, in the squares, in the parks, always keeping the right distance. It bears witness how nothing and no one can stop artistic expression, not even a worldwide virus. Antonella Lombardo is artistic director of the Laboratorio Accademico Danza school in Montecatini, near Florence, Italy. He’s also the creator of the Harmony Among Peoples festival that for 15 years has been promoting the idea of the search for possible harmony through art, as an inclusive and universal instrument. The 2020 edition did not stop with Covid. 
What shape did the festival take this year? The “Harmony for Peace” march is one of the main events of the “Harmony among Peoples” festival, and we knew that this year we were not going to be able to hold it in the traditional way. A virtual format was the only possibility, and so we launched it on 12 November. We invited schools in the area in which we are located, as well as beyond Italy, to make videos that express the meaning of peace. The response was incredible. Despite the fact that many schools in Italy now use, from a certain degree upwards, education at a distance, teachers supported the project, students responded enthusiastically, and everything took on a higher value, especially from the point of view of building relationships. The teachers collaborated with each other, and many classes made the videos that we posted on the DanceLab Armonia Cultural Association Facebook page. We received works not only from Italy, but also from other countries like France and Jordan. Thus an extremely varied digital marathon took shape and said “peace” in the most diverse artistic and choreographic formats. Of the material you received, was there something that touched you in a particular way? Why? We were struck first of all by the interactions among the kids. We don’t know where all this will lead, and the fact that they got together to work on what it means to build peace, today, is perhaps the most important thing. They had to come up with ideas with their teachers in order to make the videos. They went deep into the meaning of peace, and the fact that it is not a slogan. This made them have to dig into each other’s hearts. Even the civil servants from towns in our area who saw the early beginnings and growth of the “Harmony Among Peoples” festival were enthusiastic and told us that it was one of the most beautiful activities of their lives. In short, these relationships are the most beautiful fruit: true relationships, based on relationships built on our common good. What projects are you working on now? In collaboration with the Custody of the Holy Land, particularly with the support of Fr. Ibrahim Faltas and the John Paul II Foundation, we are working to create a dance school in Bethlehem. This project hopes to be a glimmer of hope and give dignity to so many children in these territories, who are prisoners in the open air. Another project is an international campus for dance, which will be based in Italy but be international. It will be a training centre where art will become a tool to break any kind of barrier – a place for all young people who want to leave their mark and use this language to bring beauty everywhere, even where it seems impossible.
Stefania Tanesini
Dec 1, 2020 | Non categorizzato
His Holiness Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople came to the Focolare Movement’s international centre on 20 October, where he visited the tomb of Chiara Lubich. He met representatives of the Movement’s General Council. This is the transcript of his address.
Homily of his Holiness Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome,
and Ecumenical Patriarch, for the Centenary of the birth of Chiara Lubich
Rocca di Papa-Rome, 20th October 2020
Dear Maria Voce, Emmaus, President of the Focolare Movement, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord, With great joy we have accepted the invitation to come here at the end of this journey to the Eternal City, Ancient Rome, to Rocca di Papa, where our beloved Chiara is resting, awaiting the Resurrection. It is particularly significant that we come in the centenary year of her birth – Chiara was, in fact, born in 1920 – to pay homage to her and to express our thanks to the Lord of life for having granted her to us for so long, but above all for having flooded her with his dazzling grace, expressed in the phrase that reminds us of her here: “And we have believed in Love”. The Love in which she believed and in which she grafted her whole life does not belong to this world, but did become incarnate in the world so that we could experience Him, so that we could know Him, so that we could meet Him in our brothers and sisters, everywhere in the world; so that we could taste Him, becoming one with Him, in the Holy and Divine Eucharist. How many other things our Chiara would have done if she were still among us! But it is not the years that give meaning to life, it is not the quantity, the length, but how we use the talents that He has offered us. It is the quality of life, spent to bear witness to Him who is Life. If we think, for example, of St Basil of Caesarea, the great Father of the Church, the first of the Cappadocian Fathers, he had a very short life, not even fifty years. And yet that short life, offered entirely to the Lord, produced theological, liturgical, dogmatic and ascetic works, which “bear unmistakable traces of his pen, his mind and his heart”. He was a forerunner in caring for the poor and suffering, building a little city of charity with inns, hospices and a leprosarium, called the Basiliad: it was the first hospital in history. He also took care of nature and animals, about which modern themes emerge in his famous prayer dedicated to animals. If in such a few years St Basil did such works, it is because he had completely filled his whole life with Love for Christ, giving him his breath of every moment to the point of giving his soul to God, much tried by austerities, illnesses and worn out by worries. Our Chiara lived a longer life, but in the same way she left us a legacy on which we must meditate much still. She left us the charism of unity at all levels. She lived it, experienced it, spent all her strength on it and taught everyone to play their role in society in the best way possible. We can safely say that Chiara took on this commitment to fraternity, unity and peace in all areas of human life, giving us a message through her life and her writings that we cannot ignore. The Movement and all the works that exist today, thanks to her charism, are the witness of a life spent for the Lord, which has also passed through the Cross, but was always aimed at the Resurrection. After Chiara, the helm then passed to a very dear sister of ours, whose friendship with us and with our Ecumenical Patriarchate is long and steadfast, since the years of her stay in Constantinople, where she truly left an indelible mark of the ministry of fraternity, unity and love for all: Maria Voce-Emmaus. Taking on Chiara’s mantle, during these years Maria Voce has known how to be like the good servant in the Parable of the Talents. She did not hide the talent underground, but she made it fruitful again and again, and her Lord will certainly know how to show his gratitude to her. Having reached the end of your term as President, we also wish to thank you for your great contribution to this work; the memory we have of you, like all of you, is in our heart, and you will certainly continue the charism, wherever the Lord will call you. May God, in His immense mercy, grant this work that is pleasing to Him, a worthy successor, who is once again able to surprise and amaze us and all of you, to enlighten every people in the world with the power of Love that overcomes all things, because “to love, the Christian must do as God does: not wait to be loved, but be the first to love”. (Cit. Chiara Lubich). May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Read also the article about the Patriarch’s visit to the International Focolare Centre
Nov 30, 2020 | Non categorizzato
When Chiara Lubich spoke of suffering and pain, she did not limit herself to a philosophical, psychological or spiritual concept. She always looked towards the person she called the “spouse of her soul”, Jesus, at the moment when on the cross he experienced being forsaken by the Father and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). In her deep and mysterious relationship with Him she found the strength to accept every suffering and transform it into love. We would die if we did not look at you, who transformed, as if by magic, every bitterness into sweetness; at you, crying out on the cross, in the greatest suspense, in total inactivity, in a living death, when, sunk in the cold, you hurled your fire upon the earth, and reduced to infinite stillness, you cast your infinite life to us, who now live it in rapture. It is enough for us to see that we are like you, at least a little, and unite our suffering to yours and offer it to the Father. So that we might have Light, you ceased to see. So that we might have union, you experienced separation from the Father. So that we might possess wisdom, you became “ignorance.” So that we might be clothed with innocence, you made yourself “sin.” So that God might be in us, you felt him far from you.
Chiara Lubich
Essential Writings, New City Press, 2007 p. 9
